


it's not about the body

by Anonymous



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Communication, Eating Disorders, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Happy Ending, Love Confessions, M/M, MAG 171 The Gardener die by my sword, Panic Attacks, Self-Esteem Issues, Trust, Working Out My Feelings Through Fic, i CAN promise softness and as much respect as i can give it, nobody gets cured but everybody gets loved, this is explicitly about eating disorders but the author is eating disordered, we don’t peddle mental health issues as romantic tropes in this household
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:08:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28196670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: After a moment, Martin decides he’ll just watch what Jon does, and then do the same. Takes a sandwich, a snack, a drink. Carries it outside to the picnic area with Jon, and eats without thinking. Ignores the way that it makes him feel as he slides back into the passenger seat, Jon’s fingers drumming lightly on the steering wheel next to him: uncomfortably full, in more ways than just physical.It’ll work for now, he tells himself. He’ll figure it out later.-Old habits don’t die easily in the safehouse. Jon and Martin work on it.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 41
Kudos: 140
Collections: Anonymous





	it's not about the body

**Author's Note:**

> okay i know we are all hate eating disorder fics but consider this: its #ownvoices and i get to choose the bulimia/ed rep, which in this case is martin blackwood. i have a whole thesis on this topic. it involves the tea and also the wine thing 
> 
> this was originally prompted by my overwhelmingly :/:/:/ reaction to MAG171, which... definitely very glad for extra rep outside of the usual anorexia narrative but also are we not tired of the bodies of anorexic ppl being exploited to shock audiences yet... and to a more salient point for this story specifically, i rly rly want more rep of disorders that are considered "less palatable". so the purpose of this is far more "add another story to the pile of eating disorder experiences, even if it is just in fic for a small fandom" than "trauma porn". it is anonymous only bc this is a lot to Put Out There if you're gonna be open as an author abt living with these kind of conditions
> 
> to be clear: this fic does deal extensively with the experiences of being a person who lives with an eating disorder. given my background, i have tried to be as thoughtful in my depiction as i can, and i can promise no calories, no numbers and no detailed descriptions of purging activities, but it's likely this will reflect the biases and personal feelings of my own experiences and any missteps or miscalcuations remain my own.
> 
> additionally, this is perhaps an intense fic which does deal with a potentially triggering topic just by its own nature, so please read with caution should you be vulnerable to that.

When he’s working with the Lonely, Martin doesn’t really eat.

It’s not the normal way of things for him, at all. Martin has, at the point of accepting Peter Lukas’ offer, been living on a steady metronome of starvation and over-satiation for more years than he cares to think about, and he knows the insides of his bathroom better than he’d like to admit. That familiar cycle of eating and throwing up and starving and eating and throwing up and starving is worn and comfortable in a way he doesn’t even really register as an issue anymore.

So at first, there’s something of a novelty to it – to come home at night and bypass the kitchen, and go to sleep without visiting the fridge and then the bathroom. It’s something Martin treasures with a sense of thrill that feels almost illicit, the same way he does for so many other strings he finds himself cutting of his life before Peter Lukas. There’s a kind of freedom inherent in letting go of the messiness of connections and expectations and emotions and everything else bound up in dealing with people that he hadn’t really expected; one that becomes a little addictive. And then, a lot addictive.

And then, after maybe a month, it just becomes a part of his life that buoys him up on a thoughtless, distant high, the way that passing people unnoticed in the corridors and tamping down his emotions before they start and thinking about Jon at a distance does. Just that undercurrent of a kind of detached comfort, like a recognition of all the ways things used to hurt, and now no longer do.

It’s surprising how little hurts now, he finds. Or, thinking back on it, it’s surprising how much used to hurt. His emotions and his presence and everything about him have always felt so big to him, in a way where even his happiness fit badly into the shape of what he thought it should be, big enough to always be tinged with a short, painful shock of self-consciousness and shame. Always, endlessly too much.

He thinks, in one way or another, that he always has been. Always conscious of all the ways he needed to fold himself down to make himself fit: stooping to enter into his mother’s hospital rooms, shrinking back from the things she’d say to him sometimes, folding quietly in on himself when things got too stressful at work. Even his eating was too much, whenever he could bear to think about it directly enough to really consider the shape of it: the wrong problem, the failed one, the shameful one that nobody talks about.

But it’s not that anymore. It’s good, he thinks, five months in, stepping on his bathroom scale and watching the number form with a kind of distant acknowledgement, lower than he’s ever seen it before – it’s good to finally feel like he fits.

* * *

Jon doesn’t say anything about it, after. There’s a chance that he hasn’t noticed – Jon can be obtuse about things sometimes, and Martin hasn’t lost enough weight that he’s noticeably thin, or even really thin at all. He’s thinn _er,_ yes, but mostly he’s just greyer and shakier and more tired than he used to be, and all of that can reasonably be attributed to some nebulous effect of the Lonely: at most, his clothes just don’t fit right anymore.

If he’s being honest, he doesn’t even think about what being back from the Lonely might do to the way he deals with food until he and Jon are standing in front of the lunch chiller at the motorway services, and Jon is reaching thoughtlessly for a sandwich. And then, Martin thinks, he should probably make his own decision before Jon cottons on that something’s up, but somehow he just can’t. After all these months, he’s used to skidding over the top of these kinds of choices – zoning in on the smallest thing without really thinking about anything other than a faint sense of pride that it’s no longer a source of stress for him - but that’s gone now.

Because now, after all these months, he _feels_ things again – after Jon had brought Martin back to himself, back on that desolate beach, it feels like somehow he’d tugged out a stopper out of Martin that he can’t quite replace, no matter how hard he tries. And while a lot of it is small, new feelings that he’s grappling with - the little roll he gets at the bottom of his stomach whenever Jon looks at him in that cautious, gentle way he does now, the low electric buzz under his skin of being out around people who can see him again - it’s also more than that.

Martin had thought, over the days and weeks and months of working with the Lonely, that all that time he’d been letting his emotions slide off him, never quite touching him. But the longer he’s out of the fog, the more it begins to dawn on him that maybe it never worked that way at all. Because there’s an awareness growing at the back of his mind, looming and grey and heavy like gathering storm clouds, of a whole mess of feeling that he can’t quite place; one that feels like it’s been growing, unnoticed, for quite some time. Like everything he thought he wasn’t feeling has instead just been building. Waiting.

And it terrifies him, in a way that makes him feel that old tug at the bottom of his stomach to smother it with food, to make it smaller and more manageable - more digestible.

Food shouldn’t be this way, he knows this. It can be easy: warm. Loving. His Lola had always been so excited to ply him with food, almost from the moment he and his mother had stepped over her doorstep, on the scant few occasions where they’d saved up enough to take a plane over and visit her. For Martin, the memory of her love is tied up in the sweet, soft taste of her puto pandan. And he knows the way that he used to feel, when he’d cook a meal for his mother, before it all got bitter and wrong – that kind of deep, satiated joy that comes from preparing something for someone you love. It’s about care.

So it’s different when it’s for himself, he thinks. It always has been.

After a moment, he decides he’ll just watch what Jon does, and then do the same. Takes a sandwich, a snack, a drink. Carries it outside to the picnic area with Jon, and eats without thinking. Ignores the way that it makes him feel as he slides back into the passenger seat, Jon’s fingers drumming lightly on the steering wheel next to him: uncomfortably full, in more ways than just physical.

It’ll work for now, he tells himself. He’ll figure it out later.

* * *

Partially, he thinks, he’s hoping on the chance that it won’t really be an issue at all, in his new life after. Because if his issues with food stem from the problems that he’s having around him - well, there’s nothing really in Scotland for him to feel bad about. There’s just Jon, in his new, surprising gentleness, and the peaceable quiet of Daisy’s safehouse, and the cows outside and the soft grey clouds overhead, and the slow, gentle way they spend their days together, heavy with all the things Martin doesn’t know how to say.

Except, of course, _Martin’s_ here, so it turns out that’s enough.

It takes three days for him to break, and he thinks about it non-stop. On their third night, when Jon’s safely sleeping, he slips downstairs. He opens the fridge.

* * *

Once it’s over and he’s rinsed out his mouth, he stashes the empty wrappers and packets in the bathroom’s dusty airing cupboard to deal with later, and leaves the room light-headed and empty enough that he feels like he’s floating. When he gets back into bed - the only bed in the place, a fact which he hates and loves at the same time, for the closeness of Jon and the panicked, guilty happiness that makes him feel - he’s finally, finally quiet again.

It’s like being back in the fog again, in a way that he never really realised he used to feel until he’s doing it again. And there’s more than a large part of him that hates himself for being like this - he doesn’t know whether it’s more than he’s still like this, when Jon tried so hard and risked so much to pull him out of that fog, or simply that he’s lost the thoughtless ability to be small and quiet, where in all that time with the Lonely it came without throwing up, without even really trying. 

He wants to be better. He wants to be worse. And all of it hurts.

And then over the next few days and weeks, he falls back into that old familiar pattern almost without thinking about it. It’s the same way it’s always been, Martin thinks, that kind of tired ouroboros of blame and shame, feeding back into itself exponentially. He eats which makes him want to throw up which makes him feel ashamed which makes him feel like he needs to eat: and around and around and around he goes.

Jon never notices, or at least Martin thinks he doesn’t. He’s careful to balance on the right edge of eating enough during the day that Jon doesn’t notice, although sometimes it feels like he’s really having to choke it down, food like wet sand in his mouth, and then at night he waits until Jon is definitely asleep before he slips out of bed and into the kitchen. And he’s in charge of the shopping, so it isn’t really anything at all to add the extra packets and packages and secrete them away without Jon noticing.

The worst part of it is how completely unnecessary it all is. On the face of it, the equation is simple: Martin loves Jon, in a heavy, worn kind of way that has, by now, sunken irrevocably into his bones, like a wheel in a rut he no longer knows how to climb out of, even if he’d wanted to. A habit: a fact. And in this house that they share, these days that they share - this bed, that through some silent agreement, they share - there’s nothing here but Jon, and the cautious, temporary construct of a life that they’re building together. 

There is no unwanted integer here. So there’s no reason for it. This is what he tells himself as he gets up at night and slips out of bed and into the kitchen, but it doesn’t make a difference against that great pit inside him, one he’s lost the ability to know how to fill. Being in love - being safe in love - is a good thing, he tells himself, even as he opens the bathroom door. Even unspoken. Even unrequited, as he still can’t even begin to convince himself it’s not, despite the silent weight of the way that Jon looks at him, these days, like he’s just waiting for Martin to make a move. But even with all of that, it’s still just one more thing on the list of things that he finds himself trying to smother, almost every night.

And what does that say about him, he finds himself thinking - that he’s capable of taking something so good, and making it so bitter and wrong?

He doesn’t try to answer that question. He swallows it down, too, with everything else, as best he can.

* * *

He’d forgotten how much _time_ it takes to be this way - the effort of planning and hiding and thinking and doing, where what he was like during the Lonely was mostly just an absence - and he thinks maybe, that’s why he doesn’t really notice something’s up with Jon until he stumbles across him outside, crouched on the ground and staring at nothing Martin can see, unmoving.

“Jon?” Martin says, alarmed, immediately sinking to his knees, as close as he’ll let himself get. Jon looks up, but he doesn’t say anything. His face is a rictus of panic and his breathing is laboured. “God, _Jon?_ ”

Even then, it speaks to something tragic about their lives that it takes him at least five more seconds to realise what’s happening in front of him: no monster or threat or crawling fear, at least not of the supernatural kind. Because the helpless, embarrassed look on Jon’s face is something that Martin feels like a punch to the gut, when he really, finally registers it: he knows that feeling.

Jon’s hands are resting on the ground in front of him, right next to his abandoned stick. Hesitantly, Martin takes them in his own, and is relieved when Jon grips back and squeezes, hard. He doesn’t let Martin let go.

“Can I do anything?” Martin asks, and when Jon shakes his head: “Do you want me to sit with you?”

Jon gives a small, almost imperceptible nod, so Martin slides himself to sitting in a more comfortable position, still gripping Jon’s hands where they’re seized tight around his. He waits.

After a few minutes, Jon lets out a long, shaky breath. His grip on Martin’s hands loosens a little. A moment or two later, Martin judges it might be okay to speak - before Jon has the chance to get too in his head about it, in the way he can do sometimes.

“This happen often?” he asks, as quietly and casually as he can. He’s not looking directly at Jon, just in case that’s a bit much for him right now, but out of the corner of his eye he sees Jon shake his head.

“First time. Sorry,” Jon tells him, eventually, in a quiet, strained tone that suggests to Martin that he’s right to think that he needs to handle this as gently as he can. “I just got -”

When he trails off, Martin squeezes his hands again.

“You don’t have to be sorry,” Martin offers him, hesitantly. “We don’t have to talk about it, if you don’t want to. But you know, Jon, this kind of thing, it’s not unexpected. After all, you’ve been through a lot.”

“I haven’t,” Jon says quietly, and he grimaces. “Not really, you know. I mean, when you think about what I’ve _done_ , what everyone else has -”

When Martin carefully rubs a thumb over the thick, stretched swirls of scar tissue on Jon’s left hand, Jon shuts up again in a second.

Heart thumping, Martin looks up at him, but Jon’s face isn’t that mask of panic anymore: it’s just quietly nervous, staring down at Martin’s fingers where they’re resting over the ridges of thickened skin. But Jon’s shoulders are dropped and his breathing is regular, so slowly, Martin pushes it a little: he reaches up to touch the constellation of pocked scars on Jon’s face, and then, with even more hesitation, the thick keloid one at his neck. 

That one never healed quite right: Martin remembers watching it form over the weeks and months after Jon had burst back into the office with Daisy on his heels, on the fleeting occasions Jon had been coming by in those days - Jon had never bothered to get it stitched, as far as Martin could tell, and it was deep enough that Martin had been worried.

It must be sensitive: Martin knows as much from the few scars he’s gathered from childhood accidents and the occasional adulthood mishap. He’s gotten one or two that had turned that way, raised and angry. So he’s not surprised when Jon inhales sharply as he touches it, and closes his eyes, but Jon still doesn’t seem uncomfortable: his face is calm and relaxed, and he leans slightly into Martin’s hand for the few moments he keeps it there.

Martin doesn’t hover - he doesn’t want to push it - but as soon as he takes his hand away, Jon opens his eyes and gives Martin a small, pained smile.

“Okay,” he tells Martin, grimacing again, and he slides down to sitting. “Point taken. But it’s not about - all _that._ Or at least, I don’t think so.”

Martin just tucks his knees up to his chest, and waits.

“It’s the – lack of things to do,” Jon admits to him, after a moment. “A _purpose,_ whatever. Not that it’s not good, you know,” he says quickly, and his voice goes a little fast, a little quiet. “All the things we’ve been doing, the time we’ve been spending. It’s been - God. Well, _you_ know. It’s more that I just – I’ve been moving forwards for so long, you know, there’s always been _something_ else to deal with _.”_

He huffs a quiet laugh, hunching his shoulders, and his tone turns dry.

 _“_ As much as I don’t want to complain about not being actively in fear for my life, I don’t really know what to do with myself in general, now I’m not –“

“Trying to save the world?” Martin offers, when he tails off, and Jon snorts.

“Well. Yes, I suppose,” Jon says, and he leans forward against Martin’s shoulder companionably for a moment. “Something about that lack of - clarity, I suppose - it’s all just. Muddled, and a lot. Sometimes.”

“That makes sense,” Martin says quietly, as Jon settles back again. “So it’s about the lack of distraction, right? Not having something to focus on? Like stopping for a while gives everything that you’ve been running out ahead of the chance to catch up? And, you know, like I said, you’ve been through more than most. I’m guessing there’s a lot on your heels. Overwhelming amounts, maybe.”

Jon blinks.

“Oh. Maybe? I suppose - I’d never thought about it like that, exactly,” he says, frowning. “I didn’t think - maybe it is like that. You know, that’s a really good way of putting it.”

“Well,” Martin says. “Like you said, you’ve been busy. I haven’t always been, I’ve had time to think about all of this. Be worried about you.”

Jon ducks his head at that. He looks like he’s trying terribly hard not to be pleased by that, in a way that makes Martin feel equal parts irritated and warmed.

“And that’s what, a surprise to you?” he says to Jon, mock-testily, and Jon gives him an embarrassed shove, laughing a little. “Hadn’t you been paying attention? Sorry, what exactly about this massive candle I’ve been holding for you didn’t you get a chance to see?”

“Oh, shut up,” Jon tells him, fond and slightly quiet again. There’s a nervous tinge to his voice that immediately makes Martin’s heart rate begin to spike. “And anyway. It’s not my fault that you were too busy playing shutaway to notice me fretting over you in return. I can get you the tapes, if you like. Audio evidence. Statement of Jonathan Sims, concerning six months he spent constantly thinking of one Martin Blackwood.”

On so many levels, this little speech isn’t something Martin’s even remotely prepared to look at just yet. So after a moment, he just files it away and shoves Jon back gently.

The silence that falls between them after that is surprisingly comfortable. Jon seems happy just to sit with it, and If Martin’s being honest with himself, there isn’t really a lot he can think to say to him at that moment - as much as he wants to reassure Jon and ask him if he’s alright and if there’s anything he can do and all the rest of it, the slight colour in Jon’s cheeks after their quiet banter isn’t something Martin wants to risk losing by turning the conversation serious again. 

In the end, Jon’s the one to break it, his gentle, self-conscious smile turning gently mischievous as he speaks.

“Alright,” he says, grabbing his stick and offering Martin his other hand. “Come on. Might as well put the kettle on before you explode. I can hear you holding back from offering me a cup of tea, you know. How much effort has it taken you not to ask yet?”

There’s no bite to it at all: he sounds straightforwardly fond and teasing in a way that makes Martin have to fight to keep his tone under control as he responds.

“You wound me,” he tells Jon seriously, making sure to put as much injured pride in as possible.

Jon just looks at him, and raises an eyebrow. So after a moment, secretly delighted, Martin grips Jon’s proffered hand and grumbles, “Alright, maybe a lot.”

Jon beams, and lets Martin tug the two of them clumsily to their feet. 

As soon as they’re steady, Martin moves to disentangle their hands, but as he tries Jon’s fingers seize up around his own again.

Martin looks at him, questioningly. Jon’s gentle levity seems to have disappeared somewhere between sitting and standing and he looks worried: as best as Martin can judge, he looks like he’s weighing something up.

“Actually. Just wait a second,” he says to Martin, and he sounds quietly hesitant.

That hasn’t been a good tone on Jon, historically; as far as Martin’s experienced, anything Jon is hesitant about usually ends up falling under the umbrella of scarring, or traumatising, or any other kind of life-changing in a vaguely downward trajectory. So when Jon steps toward Martin, Martin thinks he can be forgiven for the way he flinches, just slightly.

But it turns out that all Jon wants to do is this: catch Martin by the arm, gently, and then pull him close, and then just hold him.

And after a second, Martin lets himself sink into it. He has never, he thinks, been hugged like this before, or not that he can really recall - Jon pressed into him bodily, Jon’s arms tucked as tightly around his neck as Martin thinks he can probably physically manage, Jon’s face pushing into the seam of his jumper at the shoulder. For just a moment, Martin _aches,_ but then he pushes it down. 

“It’s not that I haven’t noticed,” Jon tells him, his voice muffled in Martin’s jumper. He doesn’t look up. “What you’re feeling, that you disappear at night sometimes, I mean – that there’s something happening for you, too. It’s not that I’m looking for it, but I know there’s something, I – I’m not oblivious to it. I don’t want to force you to talk about it. I just wanted to let you know that I know.”

Without thinking about it, Martin freezes.

“Sorry,” Jon says, his face still pressed against Martin’s shoulder. “Sorry. I won’t ask, so you don’t need to worry about me making you talk about it. But – I wish you would. If you wanted to. I – it felt good to share it with you, for me anyway. So thank you for that.”

Martin doesn’t say anything. If he did, that might make it real, when he’s been trying so hard to keep it contained to the anonymous safety of the night. But he does slip his arms around Jon in return, and give Jon a slight squeeze: that’s safe, he thinks. That could mean anything.

* * *

It’s not just the once: it happens again after that, Martin stumbling across him quiet and unmoving by the foot of the stairs. And then again and again, enough so that Martin finds them slipping into a little routine of it - Martin kneeling gently and taking Jon’s hands, waiting until he’s recovered enough to speak, and then they’ll sit and rest together for a few minutes, talking about nothing important, until Jon judges he’s okay to go back to what he was doing.

It’s worrying, to put it mildly. It never really seems to get any better over time, or at least not that Martin can tell. He doesn’t know if there’s something more that he could be doing but isn’t, but Jon’s reluctant to talk about it in any real kind of depth, and Martin’s reluctant to pry. To be honest, the sparse words that Jon’s offered him are already more than Martin expected he’d be comfortable with sharing.

At least, Martin thinks, he seems to be able to help Jon in the moment, which is something. Martin doesn’t know why sitting with Jon seems to help him, but whenever he folds to take Jon’s hands, the gratitude and comfort in his eyes when he looks at Martin is unmistakable. So he’s happy he can do that, at least. Reassured.

And even more reassured that, outside of these brief moments of frozen catatonia, Jon seems easier and more comfortable than Martin thinks he’s ever seen before, in a way that keeps the worst of Martin’s worries about him at bay. He laughs more easily, and his voice and movements are bright and animated in a way that sometimes makes Martin want to just sit and stare and drink him in. So at least, Martin thinks, he has that. At least they have that. 

On the flipside, there’s also serious weight to the day-to-day things he does sometimes that Martin’s growing to notice, that he finds unexpectedly heavy. Not in a way where he feels like he should be worried about Jon, like it’s connected to those moments that Jon has, or that there’s something deeper or darker under Jon’s actions that he’s not sharing with Martin - more that Jon’s making an effort to throw himself into what they’re doing together in a way that Martin’s never seen from him before.

It’s not, Martin thinks, that he’s entirely unaware of how intense Jon can be when he’s focused on something: it’s only that he’s used to it being directed at whatever monster of the week Jon’s throwing himself at headfirst, rather than the ins and outs of their slow, quiet days together. Watching Jon frown seriously at the small patch of radishes they’re trying to cultivate in the back garden is, he thinks, with a pang in his heart, another experience entirely.

It’s difficult to know whether to find it adorable, or heartbreaking. Because he never really knew Jon well enough before this to tell whether this is just the way Jon is, and he’s never had the time or chance to see it before - or whether Jon simply feels, like he does, that this time that they have in the cottage, outside of the whole mess of fears and gods and terror, is even more precious because of how little he knows it will last. That it needs to be savoured, to be recorded. 

So Jon watches their life; and Martin watches him. He comes to love finding Jon staring into the dying coals of the fire, or outside, bent over the neatly raked rows of soil with his stick for balance, inspecting the dirt with a close eye. Sometimes he won’t even notice until Martin’s close enough to reach out and touch him. Martin never does.

“So serious,” he says to Jon one sunny Friday, dropping to his knees close beside him and gently running a fingertip through the soft dirt. Jon starts at the sound of his voice, and then runs a hand self-consciously through his hair. “Do you think it helps them grow better? The weight of your all-knowing stare?”

Silently, Jon turns the stare on Martin instead, unimpressed but softened by a little embarrassed fondness. Martin smirks, and after a moment, lets Jon tug him up to his feet.

“I suppose not,” Jon says to him, turning again to frown out over the turned earth that stretches out away from them. His voice is quieter than Martin expected. “I just - I don’t want to miss it. All the work we’ve been putting in here, when we finally get to see it, I want to know as soon as possible.”

“It’ll happen at some point,” Martin tells him, off-handedly. “You don’t have to poke your nose into the dirt to see it. It doesn’t matter if you don’t see it straightaway.”

“It matters to me,” Jon tells him, still quiet, looking down and poking at the dirt slightly with his stick, and the unexpected gravity of his voice makes Martin’s breath catch in his throat slightly. When Jon meets Martin’s eye, he seems to realise the intensity of his response, because he flushes - but he doesn’t look away from Martin again. 

“Well, it does,” he says, a slight defensiveness to his voice, twisting his mouth as he speaks. “I don’t know, maybe it’s stupid, it’s just - this is our life, at least for now. This house, this garden. The things we do with it, to-together. All of it matters, I _want_ it to matter, I want to be a part of it. It’s like I told you on the beach, I don’t just want to survive anymore. It’s not all - monsters and fear, you know? I - I want to live. Even if we get sucked back into it again, when we go back. I want to have this. I want to have _lived_.”

Martin, struck by Jon’s uncharacteristic openness, finds himself speaking before he can talk himself out of doing so.

“Jon - what _did_ you mean by that?” he asks, nervously balling his hands into fists at his sides. It’s a more personal question than he’d usually let himself ask Jon - but as long as he’s here and Jon’s here, and Jon seems in this moment like he’s willing to talk, he might as well take the risk.

And a little bit, he thinks - well, isn’t this what love is, in its essence? Finding what’s best for the people he cares about, making that happen for them: isn’t that’s what love’s always been, for him? A knowing, a helping, a kind of taking care? 

“If I can ask, I mean,” Martin pushes on, before he can stop himself. “Living, actually living. What - what does that look like for you?”

Jon just looks at him, almost like he’s trying to read something on Martin’s face. For an endless, quiet moment, Martin sees the same kind of determined thoughtlessness that he’d just felt: to ask and do without overthinking it. And then Jon leans in and begins to kiss him.

There’s a brief moment where Martin steps outside himself entirely. He’s not, he thinks, allowed this. That’s what he’s been telling himself all these years, putting cups of tea down from the other side of Jon’s desk and watching Jon run in and out of the Archive and listening to him monologue from the other side of the office wall, all from that safe and cushioned distance. He knows where he stands with Jon: it’s a comfortable, worn kind of wanting, in the distant way he wants so many other things in life. He’s not allowed this.

But it doesn’t matter what he’s telling himself when Jon is really here, his mouth warm over Martin’s, his hand pushing up to rest in the hollow under Martin’s ear, his other arm slipping around to rest in the curve of Martin’s back.

So after a moment, Martin lets himself kiss back. Jon sighs quietly at that, a sound which runs the entire length of Martin’s body, and slips his arm tighter around Martin’s neck and continues to kiss him. And the sheer volume of emotion that this brings up inside him - the panic, the nervousness, the wild, bright happiness - is too much for Martin to bear. So he presses down - _hard_ \- on all of it, and forces himself to think of nothing at all as he wraps his own arms around Jon’s waist and holds him, on some automatic instinct. He lets himself be swallowed up in the bare facts of this: in the feel of Jon’s hands on his skin, the softness of Jon’s mouth over his. 

When they finally part, Jon takes his free hand out of Martin’s hair, but he leaves it resting on Martin’s shoulder.

“Was that – okay?” Jon says, and then he bites his lip. Martin can see his other hand fidgeting on the handle of his stick. “I mean, was that what you wanted, too?”

“Um, are you serious?” Martin says, before he can stop himself. “I mean - Jon, _obviously_. You know that I love you. God, Jon, I love you _so_ much.”

He watches Jon’s face light up immediately and feels again that panicked, shameful happiness blooming in his chest, pushing up bright and unruly: too big to manage, too much to be allowed.

“Yeah,” Jon says, beginning to smile big and bright, and he cups Martin’s face and peppers kisses to Martin’s cheek and his forehead and his temple, and that’s too much too, but it’s also good. “Yeah!”

“And this –“ Martin says, his voice thick and stumbling, “Is what you want, too.” _I’m what you want_ , he doesn’t ask.

Jon’s expression goes soft and serious again, and he leans in to kiss Martin again, and again, and again.

“Yes,” he tells Martin, between kisses. “ _Obviously_. I do.”

* * *

It’s not that it’s not good, after that, Martin thinks. There’s an edge of desperation to that thought that he tries, hard, to pretend isn’t there. Because it should be good - it should be great, and it is, it’s incredible, and unexpected and breathtaking, and so many other things - it’s just that it’s not easy.

If he’d thought about it - and still, and _still,_ he finds, he can’t even put words to what “it” is, like the very act of defining it is somehow too difficult for him - he wouldn’t have expected to feel like this.

Perhaps that’s the point, he thinks. He’s never thought about this - about _Jon_ \- as something he could tangibly have. He has no frame of reference for this, no expectations, and it’s all, all of it, just _so much._

So it’s not that he isn’t happy - it’s just happiness isn’t something that’s ever sat quite right on Martin. It’s not comfortable, it’s not natural. It’s like looking at the sun: beautiful and bright and warm, but he can’t bear it for too long without hurting. And the more he thinks about it - Jon’s hand in his, Jon flung against him at night, Jon stealing kisses when they go out walking or curl up on the sofa or work together in the garden - the worse it feels.

The less, he feels - in his moments of greater clarity - like he deserves it.

It’s easier to just not to. Like putting up a glass sheet between him and what’s actually happening, and he’s watching it all happen from the other side, not quite touching it. And he tries his best to pretend that he’s not, and he hopes to god Jon hasn’t noticed the numb, panicked distance that he’s trying so desperately to hide - he doesn’t want to be one more thing on the list of things that have hurt Jon. Not again.

He doesn’t stop his clandestine night-time habit, either. He can’t. And that’s almost harder than any of the rest of it, because for a brief moment he’d thought, maybe this - after everything else he’d tried over the years, maybe _this_ would be what finally worked. Because what, he thinks numbly, curled over the toilet rim - what could be better than someone he’s loved so much, through everything, returning his feelings? Why isn’t it enough? And if not this, then what?

In a way, when Martin finds Jon quiet and crouched over himself again in the front hall a week later - it’s something of a relief. Because it’s almost easier like this, as much as Martin hates himself for thinking it: this, he can deal with. This is something he knows how to handle, by now. And the help he gives to Jon in these moments feels honest, in a way that he feels like he can’t be about so many other things these days.

Gently, he slides down the wall to sit next to Jon. When Jon leans into him, minutely, Martin wraps an arm around his shoulders and just waits.

“I’m sorry,” Jon whispers, after a few quiet minutes. “I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry -”

Gently, Martin tightens his arm around Jon’s shoulders, and Jon quietens.

“Don’t be,” Martin says. “Please. Jon. You have nothing to be sorry for.”

It’s like Jon doesn’t even hear him: he’s still staring helplessly down at his feet, his face a picture of quiet misery. Under Martin’s arm, his shoulders are hunched and rigid.

“I don’t mean to make you feel like I’m not happy,” Jon says. “Because of you, the way you make me feel. Because I _am,_ I just – worry. About that, about making you think - Martin, I really am sorry.”

Martin doesn’t entirely know why here, why now - maybe he’s just tired of pretending, maybe it’s the way that, horrified, he can hear the real panic in Jon’s tone, like it matters so much to him how Martin feels - but he can feel the confession pushing its way up and out of his throat. Appropriate, he thinks, and he almost wants to laugh. 

Instead, he closes his eyes, just for a moment. He thinks of the fog, how it feels when he leaves the bathroom at night: quiet. Emotionless. Empty. And then he speaks.

“Listen. Look upstairs,” he says, in an even, unremarkable tone. “The airing cupboard inside the bathroom. Under the towels at the back.”

“O-kay…? I don’t –“ Jon says, tilting his head and frowning. For a split second, watching Jon’s obvious confusion, Martin feels a sharp sting of shame and embarrassment, as cutting as a knife. And then Jon’s expression goes soft and devastated, and he looks up at Martin. It’s surprisingly difficult for Martin to see: he pulls back his arm reflexively, and frowns. “Oh. Oh, God, Martin.”

Martin doesn’t say anything for a moment. He just looks down, fiddling with the sleeves of his jumper.

“What I mean is - I understand, right?” he tells Jon. “I’m not offended. I know that not everything is fixed, I know that in some ways things are harder now. So you don’t have to feel like you’re making me feel like – well, you know. Because I know – I know how you make me feel. And it still hasn’t fixed things for me, either. So I get it.”

Jon takes his hands and grips them very tightly.

“How long?” he says.

Martin hadn’t been expecting this: he thinks, more than anything, he’d meant to throw it out as a kind of companionable reassurance, that he understands where Jon’s at. There’s a growing, gnawing worry in his stomach that he’s made a mistake in bringing it up, if Jon’s going to steamroll over his own problems in favour of something so small and stupid, tempered by a kind of shamed, desperate pleasure that Jon is taking him so seriously, and it’s all a little too much for him to process.

But Jon is still looking at him, expectant, so he answers almost without thinking about it.

“Two weeks,” he says, but then he reconsiders. It feels like a lie, even if it technically isn’t. And he’s used to lying so many things, but especially about this - after all these years, it comes far more easily than the truth, as depressing as that is to realise. But all of a sudden, he finds he doesn’t want to anymore. At least not now: not when Jon’s been so painfully honest about his own feelings over the past days and weeks. He owes Jon at least that.

“Well, um. Fifteen years, really. Minus the time in the Lonely, or I guess it was just different then,” he admits, and then he hears how that sounds. “But it’s okay, I can deal with it. I’m used to it.”

Jon is staring at him, and Martin becomes aware, immediately, that he’s said the wrong thing.

“You - _fifteen –?_ Martin, are you _serious?_ ” Jon says to him, in a quiet, gutted voice. “I didn’t - I didn’t know that. You never said – god, Martin. All this time. I had no idea. You never said anything.”

“I mean, would you have?” Martin asks him quietly, ducking his head. “Said anything? I mean, it’s not exactly a big deal, isn’t it – just embarrassing?”

“Um, no?” Jon says, and slides his hands up Martin’s arms to rest on Martin’s shoulders. “No more than freezing up is embarrassing, or – or Tim’s anger was embarrassing. It’s not like we get to choose these things. The way we react, I mean.”

Martin hunches his shoulders uncomfortably. The weight of Jon’s concern should feel comforting, he thinks - should feel right, should feel helpful - but right now it’s all just slightly too much for him to bear.

“Listen,” he says. “I didn’t mean for this to - especially not after what just happened to you, I really didn’t mean for this. Can we just pretend I didn’t say anything?”

“Not really,” Jon tells him, a little sharply. “I think it’s slightly too late for that, Martin.”

“Sorry. Shit, sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything, it’s just - I didn’t want this to be a big deal, because - I don’t know if I can stop,” Martin says to him, stamping down, hard, on the wave of tears that’s threatening him. He didn’t mean for this, he thinks, _he didn’t want this,_ the suffocation of a care he doesn’t know how to begin to accept. “Even now I’ve told you, I just don’t know how. I never have. I’m sorry, it’s not like I don’t _know_ that it’s – weird, maybe it’s a lot. And if I could then I would, I just – ”

Jon takes a very deep breath. When Martin steals a tiny, panicked glance over, he sees Jon’s eyes are wide and shining.

“Stop,” he says, shakily. “Martin. _Please._ Like I said, we - we don’t control these things, I’m not expecting anything of you. I’m just - sorry, too.”

“You can change your mind,” Martin tells him, fighting for composure, forcing his tone to be as even as he can make it. “About what you said you wanted, about – I mean, if this changes things for you, if it’s too much, or - or if it weirds you out. We could be friends again, or whatever we were before. I wouldn’t be upset, I’d understand. If you wanted.”

Jon seems genuinely, truly hurt by that. He takes his hands off Martin’s shoulders and pulls his knees up against his chest.

“Even if we were friends, I’d still – “ he says, and then he breaks off, and looks at Martin. He frowns.

“Do – do _you_ want us to go back to being friends again?” he asks, in an incredibly quiet voice. “I mean, I’ve been worried – you said, past tense, on the beach. And you’ve been - well, you’re going through a lot, and I was the one who kissed you – so if you’re having regrets, if I’ve pushed you–“

“God,” Martin says immediately, panicked, guilt spiking up in the pit of his stomach. “No, Jon, you haven’t, I didn’t mean to make you think - I love you, Jon. You know that. I just thought this might change your mind.”

“It actually wouldn’t,” Jon informs him, in a surprisingly upset voice. “Jesus, Martin. I don’t know how you could think that.”

“It’s just - a lot,” Martin says, in a whisper, and he wraps his arms around himself. There’s more feeling than he knows how to express in those four words. “I get that, that’s why I - honestly, I never really even thought about telling you, and you’re dealing with so much already. I was worried that you’d - well. Worry. I didn’t think you’d want to deal with this, too.”

“What,” says Jon, in a tone that’s hollow and quiet, “about what _you_ want, Martin?”

Martin doesn’t answer. He finds that he simply can’t.

Jon takes one deep breath in, and then lets it out again. The look on his face is sorrowful like Martin hasn’t seen since their worst days in the Institute: Martin knows that look. Like Jon’s just figured something out, and he wishes that he hadn’t. 

“Martin. How long has it been, since you asked yourself that?” Jon asks quietly, and as if from some great distance, Martin realises he still can’t answer.

“Okay,” Jon says to him, closing his eyes just for a second and inhaling. “Alright. Why don’t we – start small, then? Figure out where to go from here?”

“Why does this matter to you so much?” Martin asks him, before Jon can say anything else. 

“I _care_ about you,” Jon tells him, in a small, hurt voice. “If you hadn’t noticed. I _want_ you to be happy, and to help you, and for you to feel good. You know, I’m told that that’s how it works, love and so on. I’m fairly sure that’s how it goes.”

The huff of laughter that escapes Martin at Jon’s turn into that familiar dry tone seems to surprise both of them. Hesitantly, Jon offers him a small, relieved smile.

“So,” he says. “Let’s start small, and really think about it. How can I help? What do you want, Martin? Do you, um. Still want me to touch you?”

Martin rolls his eyes at the obvious answer, but Jon isn’t smiling. He just waits and looks at Martin, with a kind of patient expectation that’s tinged with, heartbreakingly, a little nervousness. So Martin really, genuinely thinks about it.

“…yes,” Martin tells him, in a very quiet voice, and Jon’s face relaxes slightly as he slides a hand around the back of Martin’s neck and tugs him in for a kiss, brief and soft and sweet.

“Okay,” Jon continues, settling back. “So. Do you want me to make dinner tonight? How do we figure that?”

“No,” Martin tells him, after a moment to think about it, his voice still quiet. “I like making food. I like being in control of it. And If I have to cook for you, I have to make it good – the right portion sizes, and I can’t skip the ingredients that scare me. Anyway, I like cooking for you, it’s – it feels good to do that for you.”

Jon tilts his head to the side, just slightly.

“But not because you think I like it? _You_ want that?” he says, and Martin nods.

“I like making things good for you,” he says again, and Jon frowns.

“You know - it’s not just that, right?” he says, stumblingly. “Martin, it feels good when you sit and talk with me, or when you make a joke - you know, all those little things. Or honestly, just being around you, Martin. I appreciate you doing things for me, but that’s not why I like you.”

If he’s being honest, Martin has no real idea what to do with that, and he thinks Jon can tell: his frown deepens, and then he presses Martin’s hands briefly.

“Okay. Just - wait here a second,” Jon says, and he gets up and moves off to the kitchen for a minute.

In the meantime, Martin rests his head back against the wall and tries very hard not to think about anything at all. He doesn’t open his eyes again until he hears Jon slide down to sit again beside him: when he glances over, Jon’s settling next to him, his free hand carefully wrapped around a mug, and his expression set and earnest.

Without a word, he offers Martin the mug. His eyebrow is crooked in a question. Martin looks in the mug: it’s just tea, plain and steaming and slightly too milky in just the way he likes it. For no fucking reason at all, he feels himself beginning to tear up.

Jon wraps both of Martin’s hands around the mug, and then leans forward to kiss him, feather-light, on the mouth. For the first time, Martin feels himself chase the touch as Jon pulls back, something gentle and warm at the bottom of his chest.

“Is it okay?” Jon asks him quietly.

There are a lot of things that Martin could say to this: that tea is one of the few comforts he has to control the way he eats during the day. That he’s always liked the thought of tea as an unspoken offer of care. That he hadn’t really thought Jon had taken it seriously, or noticed the way that he takes his tea. That he hadn’t really believed how much Jon had noticed _him._

Martin looks down into the mug. He doesn’t say anything. He nods.

“We’re in this together,” Jon tells him quietly. “I help you, you help me. That’s how it’s going to be from now on, okay?”

* * *

It takes a full week, after that. He’s sitting in front of the fridge when Jon finds him, at ten past two in the morning. He’s been before for maybe an hour and a half already. 

He wants to open his mouth and apologise, but he can’t say anything at all: maybe this is how Jon feels, he thinks, when he gets like this - not that there’s nothing to say, but that there’s so much that he can’t pick what he wants to say first.

But Jon doesn’t seem fazed. He just leans his stick up carefully and then folds quietly to sitting, his back up against the counter next to Martin. After a moment, his hand steals over the cold tiles to where Martin’s is lying on the floor. Martin lets him, but he can’t bring himself to curl his fingers back around Jon’s.

“How can I help? What - what do you want?” Jon asks him, quietly, and Martin’s determined to try, so he doesn’t give himself time to talk himself out of it, or even to really think about it before he answers.

“For you to tell me how you feel about me,” he says, and that surprises him almost as much as it scares him.

But Jon doesn’t seem surprised, he just seems - well, Martin can’t tell. Quiet. Reserved somehow, in a way that Martin can’t read yet. But then carefully, he shifts around until he’s kneeling in front of Martin, and then he looks at Martin and immediately it’s too much: the weight of his gaze on Martin, the gentle, sad expression drawing over his face, the way it makes Martin feel, too big and too much to be allowed. 

For a minute Martin pushes through it, because he’s _trying,_ he really is, but then Jon opens his mouth and speaks.

“I’m in love with you,” he tells Martin, quietly and calmly, and Martin can’t take it anymore.

“Listen. I need you to look at me,” he says to Jon, desperately. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a part of him is screaming for him to stop, that he’s going to ruin it all, but the words are already out of his mouth before he can stop himself.

And anyway, he thinks. It was already over. Before it had even begun. They’ve just been pretending - he’s just been pretending. That he could change, that he could be a good person, worthy of the way Jon thinks he feels about him. How stupid of him. How selfish, how cowardly. 

So he owes Jon the truth, about the kind of person that he is.

“Like the way you showed me you, on the beach, I need you to _see_ me. With your powers.”

“Why?” Jon asks him, frowning. “Martin, didn’t you just hear what I - I don’t need to do that. I know who you are.”

“ _Please,_ ” Martin says, leaning forward and gripping his hands. “Jon, just - _please,_ okay? Now.”

“Alright,” Jon says, looking alarmed. “Um, if you’re sure, I just - I can’t promise how this is going to feel.”

“I don’t care,” Martin tells him. “ _Please._ ”

Gently, Jon’s hands dart upwards to cup his face. He moves closer to Martin until he’s only a few inches away - nothing at all, but it feels unreachable to Martin where he’s sitting, grounded, against the cold tiles of the floor beneath him and the cool wood of the cabinet against his back. 

Martin wonders how, exactly, he should go about communicating _I love you,_ and _I’m sorry,_ without words, while he still can. He tries his best. At the look on his face, Jon’s expression turns really, truly worried, but Martin can already feel the energy gathering in his fingertips, the buzz of static under his skin making Martin’s jaw go numb.

Martin presses one last, greedy kiss against the ball of his thumb, and then Jon’s eyes go bright and white and Martin is falling into them.

He can feel what Jon feels when he starts to search: it _hurts,_ in the kind of way that Martin doesn’t even know how to put words to. Part of it, he thinks, might just be the way the Beholding is - fear and pain and panic, just by its nature - but part of it, he knows, is just him. He’s spent so long trying to be unseen, even before the Lonely and Lukas and everything that came with it, that having someone look directly at him, _see_ him, is excruciating on a level he’s never felt before. He can feel every single thing that Jon turns over as he sifts through him - all the horrid, ugly parts of Martin that he likes to pretend he doesn’t see, bared out in the open. His jealousy. His cowardice. His spitefulness. And more, and more, things that he can’t even put words to for how much they hurt to think about, everything he’s been trying for so long to change or fake or cover up.

It’s horrible. Worse than he ever could have imagined, because as long as he’s been repressing it and throwing it up, he hasn’t had to admit that it’s there, and because it’s Jon - _Jon_ \- the one person in the world that Martin still has, even before he gets to thinking about the breathless, staggering way that Martin loves him, how fucking much his opinion matters to Martin, how much it always has done.

And he can’t close it off like he usually does when it gets too much, so he has to sit and sit and sit and bear it, second by endless second, as Jon turns it all over and considers it, bit by bit.

And he’d asked for this, he thinks. He’d done this to himself.

When it’s finally over, he doesn’t look at Jon. He doesn’t entirely know if he can. _It’s for the best,_ he tells himself, tight and hollow inside. _He would have seen all of it in time. He would have seen me. Better now than in a week or a month or a year._

He still has to force himself to open his mouth again.

“I want you to tell me how you feel about me now,” he says, in a whisper.

“I’m in love with you,” Jon says again, in a tight, heartbroken voice, no hesitation at all. And there’s an undercurrent there of helpless bewilderment that, tied up in everything else, knocks Martin unexpectedly breathless, because Jon doesn’t understand, he’s so fucking smart but he’s still _missing the point_. “Martin, I don’t –“

“Fucking - Jesus, Jon, just _stop_. You _aren’t_ ,” Martin says wildly, looking up. “Listen, you _can’t_ be. Did you not just see any of that? I’m jealous, Jon. And petty, and I feel too much, and I push too hard. I’m not very brave, and I’m not even very nice, that’s why I have to pretend, and I - I’m not always smart, either, and I lie a lot, and _this_ –“ and he says, and he gestures towards the fridge, and then upstairs towards the bathroom, “ – Jon, it’s not right, and I _know_ it, and –“

Jon grips his arms, and Martin tails off.

“Stop - _stop._ Just listen,” Jon says, forcefully. “How long have you cared about me for?”

This isn’t what Martin had expected at all. It takes a moment for him to gather his thoughts enough to respond.

“Uh. Um.“ he says. “Jon, really? _Now?_ You wanna make me talk about this now, the - the embarrassing origins of my long-unrequited crush?”

Jon’s frowning.

“Just go with me on this,” he says. “Please be honest. Also - I think I understand that you’re trying to make a point here, but I’d still appreciate less of the unrequited, please. If you’d kindly remember that when we woke up this morning, I was close enough that your hair was in my mouth and my arm was around your chest. So regardless of what you might think, I’d say, I’m well past the point of hesitation on admitting that I care about you.”

There’s a knife-point of guilty pleasure stabbing into Martin’s chest at remembering that, but the glimmer of reassurance under it is enough that for a second Martin can pretend he believes it, and push through the burning pain of his self-consciousness to think about how it felt to want Jon that way, all that time ago.

“Um. A long time? Maybe – around Prentiss,” he admits, looking at his hands. “When you believed me about her, and you offered me the cot in doc storage, I – I wasn’t expecting that, not from you. Maybe after – you know, when we had that conversation about my CV, and you were – God, Jon, I don’t know. We were fairly busy then, in my defence. I don’t think I could pick any specific moment. Just, sometime around then, I guess.”

“But I was a prick to you back then,” Jon says, urgently. “And for a while after, and you know it. I’ve listened to the tapes, Martin, I know you know I was awful to you.”

It’s Martin’s turn to be frowning. But the familiar little sting of charmed irritation he feels, the one he gets every now and then at the seemingly graceless turns Jon can take sometimes – it’s a strange kind of reassurance here, in a way that buoys him up against all of the old, worn hurt he’s trying desperately to swim against.

“What,” he asks Jon dryly, enunciating clearly, “Is your point here, exactly, Jon? Is this supposed to be your idea of helpful?”

“My _point,_ ” Jon says, “Is that a perfect person doesn’t exist, and I _know_ you’re well aware that I’m not one either. So this thing that it seems like you’re doing, where you’re trying desperately to persuade me that having flaws and scars makes you an irredeemable person? That I shouldn’t still love you? Martin, I’m callous sometimes. I’m not very good at expressing my own feelings. I’m impatient, and often unkind, and I’m not always brave. But you still loved me.”

And just like that, Martin’s breathless with hurt all over again. He doesn’t say anything. He stares, hard, down at his feet.

“I’m in love with you,” Jon tells him gently, one final time. “You don’t have to worry about me waking up one day and realising that you tricked me into being with you, or thinking that I fell for someone who doesn’t exist. I told you, I know who you are: I didn’t have to look inside your head for that. I mean, it took me longer than I maybe would have liked to finally see you, but I do now.”

“I’ll tell you as many times as you’d like,” he continues, with that same old determined stubbornness that threatens Martin near to tears, for the familiar, dear steadfastness of his stupid, dear obstinacy.“And we can do - _this_ \- as many times as it needs. I’m not going anywhere, Martin. Like I told you - we’re in this together, now. It’s me and you, for as long as you’d like.”

“Can I –“ Martin stops, and chokes, and then he starts again. “Can I look at you again? Like you did on the beach?”

“That… depends,” Jon says, suspicion in his voice. “Can I ask why? Martin, if this is just going to be some way of handing you another stick to beat yourself up with, I’m afraid I’m not going to do it.”

“It’s not that,” Martin tells him quietly, forcing his breaths to slow and even. He spreads out a hand over the knee of his pyjama trousers, and focuses on the soft weave of the flannel under his fingers. “Listen. I’ve always been – a lot. For everyone. Friends, co-workers, f-family. I know it. I mean, you know I was a lot for you, at the beginning – too friendly, too loud, too clumsy, whatever. But when I was with the Lonely, I was finally – quiet. Small. You know. And all those emotions I didn’t know how to manage, the messy ones that bothered everyone so much, they just… went away.”

He’s not looking at Jon, still staring down at his own hand where it’s resting on his knee. But just beyond him, he can see Jon’s own hands where they’re resting on his thighs, his knuckles clenched tight and pale where he’s got his hands curled into fists. He becomes aware that Jon’s breathing has gone very, very quiet.

“But when we were on the beach,” he says, “and you showed me you – God, Jon, it was so much. Everything you were feeling, all your worry and - and everything else. Okay, yeah, it hurt, but it was a good kind of hurt. And just for a second, it felt like – I wasn’t the only one in the world who felt too much sometimes.”

“I love you a lot, Jon,” he says, in a quiet, light tone, looking up at him, and Jon makes a noise almost like he’s in pain. “You know that. Enough that I worry that it’s too much, sometimes. So I wanna feel what you showed me before again, just so I know that it’s alright to feel like that.”

“Alright,” Jon tells him, softly. His voice is a kindness that still burns Martin to hear, just a little. “Just – hang on.”

Just like it was on the beach, it’s overwhelming. The sheer force of Jon knocks the breath from Martin’s chest: Martin can’t imagine how it must have been for Jon, just now, to see _him._

But it’s different this time, after these weeks spent together, because now he _knows_ Jon - not just as a distant crush or a hopeless object of devotion, but a real, actual person, who’s unbelievably grumpy in the mornings and gets distracted doing almost anything he’s not entirely invested in and steals all the blankets at night, even though Martin’s the one who gets cold. So it’s easier for him to sift through the different parts and pieces that he recognises - Jon’s burning curiosity, his stubbornness, the raw terrified scars of all the things he’s been through - and _see_ them and _think_ about them.

And then, when he finds the part of Jon that loves him - it’s heartbreakingly stupid, he thinks, that it’s a surprise to him. So fucking stupid. It’s not like Jon hasn’t been telling him, in any way he can, that this is how he feels about Martin, and it hurts a little that it’s taken _this_ to really understand it.

But here it is. Undeniable: unquestionable. And it’s different from the way that Martin feels for Jon - it still sits a bit uncomfortably where it’s slightly newer, still achingly tinged with a kind of dizzied disbelief that Martin’s here with him and okay - but running through it is that same warm, recognisable core that Martin feels lighting him up whenever he looks at Jon: a mixture of respect and appreciation and joy and comfort, deep like the ocean, bright like the sun.

It hurts the same way all the rest of it does, the way that everything soft fits wrongly when Martin tries to apply it to himself. But he forces himself to sit with it - _really_ sit with it, not trying to escape into the numbness that’s come so easily for so many years, even before the fog - until the shape of it becomes, if not comfortable, at least familiar. He owes Jon that much, he tells himself. And Jon thinks he’s owed that much, so he has to trust that, too. 

And then it fades and it’s just him and Jon again - normal Jon, quiet Jon, with his long, messy hair and his gentle expression, looking at Martin with a slight self-consciousness. He’s still so far away from Martin, the inches between them like miles.

For a long, quiet moment, Martin loves him like nothing else exists.

“So - alright?” Jon asks him, a little nervous. “You saw it, right? Do you get it now?”

Martin leans forward and kisses him, and he hears Jon loose a harsh, violent breath, almost like he’s been punched. Then Jon surges against him to kiss him back, and only then does it occur to Martin that this is the first time he’s ever done this: how it must feel to Jon, to be the only one reaching out, over and over. So then he stands and tugs Jon to his feet and kisses him again, and wraps his arms around Jon and walks him back upstairs to their bedroom, stick in hand, and presses small kisses to the side of Jon’s neck, while Jon laughs and pulls Martin’s arms around him tighter. 

“I love you,” he tells Jon, over and over, and Jon presses tighter against him, twists around to press his own kisses against Martin’s cheek and neck and mouth. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

And Martin refuses - _refuses -_ to let himself feel bad or guilty or ashamed, about any of it. Just pretend, he tells himself. At least pretend. Just for tonight. As long as he’s here, buoyed up on that inescapable _feeling,_ the sense memory of Jon’s care for him. While you’ve got it, at least pretend that this is how it could be, all the time.

“Oh, Martin. I like this,” Jon says to him warmly, when they’re back in bed and nestled together, closer than Martin usually lets himself get on purpose. He’s got Martin’s arms pulled tight around him, and his voice is delightfully smug. “I really do. This is very good. Can we be doing this all the time?”

Martin snorts.

“I changed my mind,” he informs Jon, mock-seriously, still riding the high of Jon’s undeniable care. “If you’re gonna be glib about this, your boyfriend application is rejected.”

Jon’s whole face transforms at that: open and bright with a big, wide smile, joyful like Martin’s rarely seen before.

“Boyfriend application?” he says, twisting slightly so Martin can see him properly, his voice incandescent with a kind of teasing happiness. “Martin, boyfriend?”

“Problem?” asks Martin defensively, aware he’s flushing far more deeply than he’d like.

“Oh, not at all,” Jon says, after a moment, but he’s still grinning and his voice is disgustingly light. “I just like the way that sounds, that’s all. Even if it is a little juvenile, perhaps. But then, there’s not really a word for “deeply in love and determined to be together after many terrible things”, I suppose.”

It’s interesting, Martin thinks, all the different shades of things that can feel too much. Terrible things, and good things. But it’s nice to be here, now, and feel something _enough_ that makes him want to do nothing more than bury his face in the side of Jon’s neck. It’s good.

When he pulls back, Jon’s smug grin fades a bit, transforming into a soft, gentle smile. He fully turns in the circle of Martin’s arms to face him, and kisses the corner of Martin’s mouth.

“Listen. Speaking of. Like I said before, I’m not going to make you talk about it, if you don’t want to,” he says gently, almost apologetically. “I just wanted to make sure - did any of that help, at all?”

Martin blows out a breath. He grimaces.

“Well… yeah, I think so,” he admits, quietly. “I mean, not totally. I meant what I said, Jon - I’ve never been able to stop before, I don’t know how, I don’t know if this is gonna change things. 

“I don’t even know if it’s going to make things worse, in the short-term - god, not that it would be your fault, I’m just - used to pushing all this down, even if it’s good. Sometimes especially if it is. And Jon, this is… it’s _good._ But it all feels like it weighs on me a bit less right now? So take this while you’ve got it, I guess.”

Jon bites his lip.

“I’d like this to last a bit longer, ideally,” he says. “I mean, if at all possible. I mean, like I said, your food thing, I know I don’t understand enough - yet, but I’d like to, if you were - well. Anyway. I’m not pressuring you about it, the last thing I want to do is judge you. I meant what I said before, you know. None of us choose the way we react.”

Martin thinks about Jon’s hands when he freezes up, rigid and cold under his own. The panic and guilt he sees on Jon’s face - how, if Martin hasn’t been able to stop, Jon still hasn’t either.

“I know,” he tells Jon quietly. “Like you said. We’re in this together.”

“Aha. _Exactly,_ ” Jon says, like he’s just scored a point. His voice is smug, but his eyes are very soft. “So. Given that, when it comes to me and you, it would be nice if we didn’t have to do this dance every time you wanted to kiss me, when you know I’m not - opposed. _Quite_ the opposite. Obviously. And especially if it’s helpful, for you to understand how I see you, the way - the way I feel about you. But like I said. I can say it - I can show you - as many times as you need.”

Martin flushes.

“I mean, I wouldn’t be. _Opposed._ I, uh. I like the way I look, in your eyes,” he admits.

“And... how is that?” Jon asks, his grin turning a little sharp again, slipping his arms around Martin’s neck. He tilts his head. “Just out of interest. Um… boyfriend-like?”

“Seen,” Martin tells him. _After all this time._ _After everything_. For no real reason he can think of, he pictures the tiny seeds in their garden, deep in the rich brown soil. Fed and watered by their hands, together, nourished and waiting to grow. And he leans in, and feels the word sprout in his chest: whispers it quiet, like a secret, into the curve of Jon’s shoulder. “Enough.”

**Author's Note:**

> did not actually intend to publish smth like this: it took me six months and a lot of work to decide to do so, even anonymously! thanks to a friend for suggesting i take the risk and put this out there. i rly hope this comes across as respectful and gentle as i intended it to be


End file.
